Las Vegas Pt II - Stating the Obvious

One of the nicknames for Las Vegas is "Disneyland for Adults" - so one is correct in thinking that there are a number of seriously strange things that you can get up to in this town. Perhaps one of the stranger things is a visit to the Liberace Museum. Now I am not entirely sure that I have ever actually listened to a Liberace recording, however my mother was a big fan and come hell or high water she was going. So, in for a penny, in for a pound.

The museum itself is about three miles away from 'the strip' - ie where the casinos are. I believe it is in what you would call a strip mall, decorated in a creme pseudo-adobe style with a whopping big grand piano above the door. Now, I understand that times were very different back then and that if you were gay you definitely wanted to keep it under wraps. If you were in the public eye you definitely wanted to vigorously defend any accusations. And the less said about a gay, public performer who happened to be a Roman Catholic the better. You may recall that Liberace actually took some publishers to court for libel - using thinly veiled language they accused him of frolicking with his lengthy string of pool boys. Nonetheless, never let it be said that I will allow dark and depressing period of history get in the way of making a joke. You see, I simply cannot fathom just why it is that the defence team didn’t just hold up pictures of the costumes the man wore followed by a perfunctory "The defence rests..." I mean, seriously - check this one out...

I think I am making a fair statement in saying that you would be hard pressed to find a more flamboyantly gay costume in the midst of the Sydney Mardis Gras!

The museum itself was actually quite interesting - I will admit I had no idea as to just how big Liberace was in his heyday. Not to mention how far his penchant for glitz and glamour went - the multiple luxury cars covered in rhinestones were somewhat of a revelation! Definitely not something the chaps from Top Gear would drive around in. If you click on the picture - and I would recommend doing so to experience the full visual spectacle of this ensemble - you will note the mirrored grand piano in the background.

So, if you find yourself in 'Vegas and you tire of the constant hustle and bustle I recommend a trip out to the Liberace museum. It will certainly open your eyes to something that your parents may very well have enjoyed listening to whilst sipping from a bottle of Cold Duck Sparkling Vino...

Las Vegas Pt I – Is Anything Real?

My parents came over to the US for my 30^th birthday. As part of these spectacular celebrations I figured we may as well go down to Las Vegas. What could be more appropriate than celebrating the last gasp of your irresponsible 20’s in the town that has the motto “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. It is a 5 hour flight from New York to Las Vegas – and unfortunately it was also an economy class flight all the way there. It has been some time since I have had to suffer through flying in the crappy end of an aircraft – let alone the fact that I have managed to score some flights on the company jet which makes even first class seem passé. The other thing about flying into Las Vegas is that you are coming in over the desert – lots of strong thermals and mountains to make for a real interesting turbulence factor. I can assure you that there were times on our approach to the runway that I was wondering whether the pilot was having flashbacks to his time in Vietnam and was throwing the aircraft around the sky to dodge incoming flak and surface-to-air missiles. But we got down onto the deck in one piece – any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

And yes – it is true – you can use pokies in the Las Vegas airport. I have uploaded one picture in particular for you. Yes, you are seeing correctly – a Star Wars slot machine. I suppose it makes as much sense as the good old Queen of the Nile back in Sydney. The really creepy one though was the Alien Slot Machine – one hopes that the jackpot wasn’t a facehugger launching at you.

Impressions of Las Vegas? First and foremost – nothing in Las Vegas is real. The casinos are expanding like the megacities in all those William Gibson novels – the majority of them are linked together through a series of tunnels and outbuildings. The Casinos themselves are usually based on a theme, some highlights being;

- Aladdin, a Middle East theme without the suicide bombers
- Paris, Paris without smelly student protestors & has a quarter size Eiffel Tower
- New York, NY without the steam pipe explosions
- Excalibur, an authentic King Arthur castle with 4,000 rooms, a moat & a fiberglass keep
- Luxor, a Glass Pyramid with a beam of light coming from the top that can be seen from space
- The Venetian, Venice without the stinky canal factor

As you can tell, subtlety is obviously the overarching motto of Las Vegas! One of the more surreal moments was actually at the Mandalay Bay hotel which has a ‘bit’ of a beach theme – 3 enormous wave pools. We went to what was one of the more impressive Aquariums I have ever seen – sitting 5 metres underwater looking at Sharks, Barracuda and all kinds of aquatic life whilst surrounded by a desert and being several hundred miles from the nearest ocean.

Needless to say that if you were an engineer in this town you would have a marvelous old time building the sort of things that used to be built by the more eccentric branch of the British Royal Family. Of course everything is made out of steel frames and what appears to be fiberglass or chipboard. This results in an insane urge to reach out and touch everything – I imagine that the closest you can get to this experience outside of Las Vegas is on a movie set in LA. You have this constant sense if you just peek around the next corner you will see the back of the building being held up by frames without an interior.

What supports this excess? Well consider the following stats for 2006,
- Number of visitors: 38,914,889
- Visitor Contribution: US$39,419,205,580
- Hotel Rooms: 132,605
- Government Gaming Revenue: US$10,643,206,000

So you can imagine that the great state of Nevada quite likes’ the gambling! They also like the boxing! In what was to become a bit of a recurrent theme for my parents visit, we just happened to pick a weekend in which a massive event was taking place. A boxing match. To give you an idea as to how big this event was – approx. 400 private jets had flown in for the weekend. So many that they were having trouble parking them all at the airport. Ringside seats that had originally sold for $10,000 were being sold by scalpers for $30,000.

On the next installment of Las Vegas – The Liberace Museum! (C’mon – we all know there was no way in hell that I was going to go ‘Vegas and not stop in at this place…)